Why Las Vegas Is Still America's Most Sinful City

Vices
Truth is, the game was rigged from the start. So I study gaming.

It came as no surprise that a recent WalletHub study named Las Vegas the most sinful city in the United States. After all, “Sin City” has to be more than just marketing fluff, right? Las Vegas definitely is sinful, at least according to the parameters of the study, but not because it’s any different from the rest of the country—just a little more honest and accommodating than virtually everywhere else.

Las Vegas topped a recent survey of "sin" by appealing to a variety of vices. Photo: Getty

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WalletHub, a personal finance website, ranked major metropolitan areas across seven areas which are adapted from Seven Deadly Sins. Envy becomes “jealousy;” wrath, “anger and hatred;” sloth is “laziness;” pride is characterized by “vanity;” lust and greed are self-explanatory; while gluttony is enlarged to “excesses and vices.”

How do you measure these sins? WalletHub’s researchers picked out a few quantifiable metrics for each sin, then totaled up the results, yielding a ranked list of 182 cities, from most (Las Vegas) to least (South Burlington, Vermont) sinful.

The key is how Wallethub’s experts quantified each sin. Lust, for example, was attributed to four disparate factors: the number of adult entertainment establishments per capita, the Google search interest index for “XXX Entertainment,” a ranking of “most active Tinder users,” and the teen birth rate. While it’s easy to see how the number of strip clubs could be a good proxy for measuring lust levels, other factors, particularly the teen birth rate, might be more a reflection of access to contraceptives or differing social mores rather than pure lust. While Las Vegas has plenty of adult entertainment,

Searching for adult entertainment was one of the metrics used to quantify "lust" in the WalletHub study. (Photo by George Rose/Getty Images)

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Vanity, likewise, was measured by a combination of the number of beauty and tanning salons per capita and the Google search interest index for the term “Top 5 Plastic Surgeries.” While this certainly reflects vanity on a physical level, it doesn’t capture the full range of prideful excesses. Would it be possible to rank cities by the number of selfies posted per capita? That might be a more salient indicator of vanity.

What is interesting is that Las Vegas was rated the most sinful city in the land despite not having the top spot in any individual sin. Lust, for example, would seem to be an area where Las Vegas should be king of the mountain; after all, “what happens here,” wasn’t talking about Nevada’s lack of personal income tax or the great diversity of natural wonders within an easy drive. But Las Vegas comes in at 12 on the lust list; one notch below Washington, DC, a fact that writes its own punchlines.

The performance of Las Vegas as an all-around vice center is a fitting role, given how the city has adapted to broad social and political shifts that have eroded its uniqueness. Once, Las Vegas was one of the only places Americans could legally gamble; that boat, of course, sailed a long time ago, with casinos in or near more major cities and gambling in general ubiquitous (you’d have to stay in Hawaii or Utah to completely avoid legal gambling). In what seems an eternity ago, Las Vegas stages titillated audiences with topless showgirls. But mere nudity is almost prim these days, what with easy access to online pornography of virtually all flavors.

Greed, too, is hardly a Vegas-only sin, although the way that the WalletHub study tabulated it, Las Vegas certainly has a running start. Casinos per capita, one measure, is an area where Sin City should still dominate; while gambling is certainly widespread, you generally find one or two casinos in most metro areas, not the Las Vegas Strip (or Fremont Street, for that matter). The other markers, charitable donations as a share of income (presumably greedier cities were at the lower end of this measure) and the share of adults with gambling disorders, might be seen as being more pronounced in a city known for its gambling.

But Las Vegas ranked fifth in the nation for greed. Gulfport, Mississippi, with two casinos, ranked first, though it is likely that the 11 casinos in neighboring Biloxi were included in that total. Billings and Missoula, Montana tied for third, likely because of the number of small taverns with video gaming devices located there.

That Las Vegas ranked only fifth in this gambling-heavy metric is a commentary both on the pervasiveness of casinos around the country and the growth of Las Vegas as an urban center. With more than two million people, Las Vegas is a full-fledged metropolis. Sure, the Strip is still at the center of the valley (and much of the economy), but from Summerlin to Nellis Air Force Base, there is much more to Las Vegas than neon and dice. Las Vegas hasn’t yet outgrown gambling, but clearly gambling is no longer the start and end of the story.

The same goes for each of the other sins. The failure of Las Vegas to be more prone to hatred or addicted to vice than St. Louis, more envious than Fort Lauderdale, greedier than Gulfport, more lust-obsessed and vain than Los Angeles, and lazier than its immediate neighbor North Las Vegas isn’t a sign of regression or progress. Las Vegas isn’t becoming more virtuous or less adept at appealing to those who want to sin. Rather, it’s a sign that the city continues to excel at letting people do what they want—which is often not what is good for them or those around them. While other cities might offer more slot machines or tanning salons per capita, Las Vegas remains the place that Americans consider Sin City because it has such an array of vice and indulgence.

It might not be as catchy as “What happens here, stays here,” but “Las Vegas: America’s All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of Sins” might be the most accurate description of the city’s appeal in an age of prevalent vice and indulgence.